The collaboration is intended to help customers to identify multinational trends and to more closely observe market developments. At the core of the agreement are key figures from the USA — the world’s largest audience market — and the UK, the second largest book market in Europe. Information obtained by Nielsen will be integrated into the GfK databases and provided to customers via the connected web tools.

This will provide an overview of bestsellers, hot topics and successful authors in different genres, and according to the announcement, will enable conclusions on sales traffic in other countries such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

“Having operated independently for many years, it is very exciting to be working with GfK and we hope this collaboration between the two companies will be a powerful proposition for clients and prospective clients,” said Jonathan Sloper, SVP and global managing director of Nielsen Book. “Our aim is to deliver market data that our clients need to fulfil their business requirements, wherever they are based. We anticipate that including the Anglo-American market data in the GfK modules will be the first step of a long-term collaboration between Nielsen and GfK in the field of book research.”

The announcement was made to coincide with the Frankfurt Book Fair.